Homeschool Adventure 4th Grade

Our adventure started back up in September and thing have moved forward at very good pace.  I found a homeschool group to do some activities with.  A high school friend is currently homeschooling so our sons have been able to interact during the day.  We have gone roller skating through a homeschool program and as the weather gets colder we will be back to jumping inside to lose some energy through another homeschool special.  

We continued with our math and science program.  Daily Geography by Evan Moor works really well for LT and we just added a daily science element to our morning work.  We continue building those fine motor skill through Handwriting without Tears.   All About Spelling is a huge success and I am thinking All About Reading starting in January to build stronger reading skills.  I am looking into a more detailed grammar program.  We have worked through our reviews as we head into our first quarter ending.  Holidays are always interesting but by January we will be fully involved in 4th grade and working on being more independent in the learning process.  

As our adventure continues and we are back into our routines I will update our blog as we move along.  Thank you all for following and offering your support through kind words.  

Apraxia .... The name of the game

Apraxia

Is the name of the game that LT plays Morning, Noon and Night

This is a great post about the struggle from the parent view:

When I hear apraxia will never go away.

From the FACEBOOK Group

Speaking of Apraxia

A March Day

A March Day

For this homeschool year I decided our schedule would not be based on times but rather on items that needed to be completed before the end of the day.  LT always complained about being tired last year so instead of setting an alarm I allow him to wake on his own.  Our homeschool day starts any where between 9 and 10 am.

Two days a week our school day begins after therapy.  On these days and when it is nice out we do try to wander around in the environment until lunch time.

We cover math, reading, writing and science.  We just picked up a new health, safety and manners curriculum and we switched gears with our spelling program.  I also found a STEM curriculum that we are going to start in the next week.  I am not about busy work but rather allow for free time for him to explore his interests.

 Sometimes the free time is used to explore some educational games.

Since the "nicer" weather is returning we are going to try to do a mile walk every morning. Fresh air and physical activity and some much needed natural vitamin D.

We finished our time Chapter in Math Mammoth and started our money Unit.

It is nice to have a curriculum completely laid out for you.  It took me a lot of research and time to finally decide on this curriculum and LT is really liking the layout of the program.  We should be finishing up with our first Unit this week.  This came from A Beka Books, third grade. 

LT was doing really well with spelling but not really learning why we spelling items they way we do.

I had been researching this since I started looking into homeschooling and finally decided to purchase the program.  Our first day went really well and he enjoyed the magnet board letters.    This program comes from All About Learning , a homeschool Reading and Spelling program.

Most of the program we use mix up the medium to learn the task at hand.  This gets LT out of his seat moving around through out the day.  Which is good for him since I classify him as wiggly anyway. 

As soon we get through our first units in our three new programs I will do a review of how they work in our homeschool setting.

Rolling Right Along

Amazingly we are rolling right along.  I have made some adjustments but stuck with the idea of starting and finishing something before moving on to the next item.  I got our FB page active and we have our youtube videos reviewing what we use.  Doing this has been helpful for me because I prefer visuals when it comes to learning.  Since we have reduced some of the stress of trying to conquer to much at once, LT has done a huge turn around with therapy and is doing amazingly well lately.  

As we roll in to March, which I can't believe is here already,  I will be introducing a new health unit.  I will do a review on that once it arrives.  I have found TeacherPayTeachers be extremely useful and task cards have become one of LT's favorite activities.  

I think the major challenge has been the fact that the weather has been extremely cold and the house seems a lot smaller when you are home all day.  

I got some fun and creative from Language Arts games from A Not So Wimpy Resource and I'll share those in my next blog.

Here is to a nice weekend and while March will roll in like a lion since we will have a chance for more snow on Sunday I am hoping March will roll out like a lamb.  

How our day moves forward

I have determined Blogging is a lot harder than I thought.  I figured I would jot down ideas and share pictures but life takes over and then I realize it been a couple months since my last post.

We have started a New Year, three month into our adventure and we are a couple weeks away from the second quarter reporting.  I started a New FB page for the LT Homeschool Adventure  https://www.facebook.com/pages/LTs-Homeschool-Adventure/659704990806484
and I found inspiration from Teachers pay Teachers on material that is designed from those who know children the best.  I have to rework worksheets on lined paper LT can write on and by following a lot of these amazing teachers through blogs and other social media outlets I have been inspired to start working on our own designed worksheets.  The realistic goal is to aim for the next academic year but we will be testing out some in our 3rd grade setting.

Here is a snap shot of our day today.  

Planning desk has a nice view of outside.

Little man always complained about being tired last year so I decided to allow him to wake up on his own sleep schedule.  He wakes up anywhere between 8 to 9:30 and we have had very few melt downs or complaints about being tired since we went this route with him.  

Currently we are running on a half day schedule because I am not feeling well but we were a head of schedule before the break and should be caught up and back on schedule by the end of the week even on the half day schedule.

Planning time while the girls are getting ready for school

While his old school is already in session, LT is still snoozing away

Working on a geography lesson

I am a morning person so I do my planning in the morning.

Our day starts anywhere from 9 to 10 o'clock depending on when LT gets up and when the girls are not home until late our day usually doesn't end until almost 4.   We have lots of movement breaks and longer lunch time.  The day is set up with tasks that need to be completed.  Lawrence takes longer to complete a task, so we are not focused on time restraints right now but we are focused on starting and finishing a task.

Next we should, fingers crossed, be back to our full routine and hopefully I'll be able to keep up with blogging.

Happy New Year and Thank you for reading and following our adventure.